Nintendo Wii Review: Bakugan Battle Brawlers

For more than a decade, card games have been dominating the market of Saturday morning TV, toys, Holiday shopping binges, and of course Video Games. The biggest card craze to hit children’s card gaming was Pokemon, which was immediately followed by Yugioh (Yûgiô). Though not as famous as Pokemon, the “Yu-Gi-Oh!” trading card game exceeded 22.5 billion cards sold, earning it a place in the Guinness World Records as the top selling trading card game in the world. More mature audiences satiated their card gaming lust with Magic the Gathering. Now, there’s a new card gaming sensation that’s flooding Holiday carts: Bakugan Battle Brawlers.

Bakugan raises the stakes on child card gaming by implementing a transforming toy into the game. Each player has several Bakugan, a small plastic ball that pops open into a monster when it rolls on top one of the magnetic gate cards in play. In the Animated Series, these Bakugan open up into life-size monsters, much like in Yugioh or Pokemon. In Bakugan, players aim to land their Bakugan on one of gate cards. When two opposing Bakugan land on the same card, a battle begins. From there, players add boost cards to raise the G-Power of their Bakugan. If you have the highest G-Power you win. The player to collect three cards first wins.

The video game version of Bakugan is much like the actual game with a few differences. Activision added in a few mini games to help create more depth to the monster battles. After two Bakugan enter a battle sequence, the G-Powered boost of the gate cards is tallied to your monster’s G-Power. Then you can play up to three boost-trap cards to raise your abilities. Next, you will enter one of three mini-games requiring you to engage in Wii-mote waggle (more like shake as though your life depended on it), timing or shooting activities. The shooting activity is by far the best of the three, but I noticed that I ended up in the Wii-waggle mini-game nearly sixty percent of the time. This proved to be quite annoying as most Wii-waggle activities are after the billionth shake.

As you progress through the tournament you will also get to power up your Bakugan with several attributes. For instance, if you miss landing on a gate card while throwing down your Bakugan you have a power meter to nudge your Bakugan forward. One of the boosts gives you more power to further nudge your Bakugan onto the gate card. Your opponent can also shoot your Bakugan to prevent you from landing on a gate card or bump your Bakugan with his or her Bakugan to lower your G-Power before a battle. Other attributes will help increase your resistance to these attacks. The game is filled with unlockable items like clothing, cards and bonuses that you can swap into play when you go home. There are over 200 ability and trap cards throughout the game.

Perhaps the coolest feature for children gamers is that they can play alongside Dan, the star of the animated series. So, when you play alongside Dan you do get the feeling as though you are inside the game. The graphics are crisp and bright to help match up to the game’s animated counterpart. Once you get to the partnered tournament matches, you’ll also be able to play another mini-game before the start of battle. Instead of simply throwing your Bakugan ball down on a gate card, you can navigate it through several G-Power Ups on the field. This takes some time to master at first, but it should be great fun for kids once they get the hang of it.

Bakugan can get monotonous after a while, playing against the computer. The mini-games are nice, but as I said before the random mini-games chose tend to favor the Waggle game. Activision could have given this game a serious G-Powered boost had they done more with the actual fight, rather than leaving everything to the build up before the fight. That way gamers would feel more tied to the actual battles. Games like Pokemon have multiple tiers of engagement, where you not only train your Pokemon but you also have more interaction in the actual fight sequence.

Unfortunately, Bakugan Battle Brawlers for the Nintendo Wii doesn’t come with any online play. In a game about dueling other opponents, you would expect this to be a major necessity. This would have helped make up for the lack of active fighting in the game. You can still play with up to four players locally, so if you’ve got a party coming up this may be the time to break out the Bakugan for Wii.

Bakugan Battle Brawlers is an excellent game for Bakugan fans. Is this the definitive Bakugan gaming translation? I don’t think so. Outside of introducing online play, I think Activision can do a lot more with the franchise. Creating a deeper battle system will immediately boost this game’s entertainment value and help keep the repetitiveness at bay. For now, this Bakugan game will surely delight younger fans as they wait for a bolder gaming adventure. Hopefully, they don’t have to hold their breath too long.